Neat transcription software for Mac

allen

Hi all,

I've found a great piece of software that can do a few of the things that the existing transcription apps can do (e.g. transpose key, slow down, loop a section), but it does an incredible job of easily separating out the different parts of the music.

It's called Algoriddm Neural Mix Pro.

It's very hard to explain how good it is - any source music becomes a multitrack and you can reduce the volume of vocals, drums, bass, etc. It can also remove guitar pretty reliably so can create a backing track from anything.

No affiliation, but it seems like a good find. Oddly enough, there is a free version which seems to do all the important bits for guitar players.



https://www.algoriddim.com/neural-mix-pro

hollywoodrox

Wow ,that’s so cool, be great like you said for making backing tracks too

Blaendulais

Thanks!

axisus

Thanks, I'll check that out!

Blueingreen

I'd be interested to know whether it can isolate the guitar better than the likes of Transcribe!.  As a long term Transcribe! fan that would be the attraction for me.

Fez

That looks interesting.

Kittyfrisk

Very interesting, thanks for raising it.
@WiresDreamDisasters   Drew, this might be a way to get those unusual backing tracks you were after?

allen

I might do a YouTube demo if I get some spare time. 

I use capo to slow down and practice but it’s a subscription model and pretty expensive for what I use it for. 

Fortheloveofguitar

This looks great. Keen to try it out 

Handsome_Chris

Marvelous stuff.  I can get rid of the drummer and the vocalist: if I could lose the other guitarist I'd be happy. 

Fortheloveofguitar

I downloaded this morning and so impressed I bought the full version as I needed to be able to export the altered mix

Sole reason I bought it was to isolate solos from songs. There’s a few over the years that the solos are so fast and embedded in the mix that Riffstation etc still couldn’t pull the notes out far enough for me to hear what was really going on 

This app has got me the best results yet so more than worth the £48 price tag for me personally 

Looking forward to having a lot of fun with this. Made my day 

hollywoodrox

Fortheloveofguitar said:

I downloaded this morning and so impressed I bought the full version as I needed to be able to export the altered mix

Sole reason I bought it was to isolate solos from songs. There’s a few over the years that the solos are so fast and embedded in the mix that Riffstation etc still couldn’t pull the notes out far enough for me to hear what was really going on 

This app has got me the best results yet so more than worth the £48 price tag for me personally 

Looking forward to having a lot of fun with this. Made my day 

Sounds promising, something else to save up for now. Although I do use a site called something karaoke for backing tracks, that all backing tracks can be edited

Blaendulais

allen said:

I might do a YouTube demo if I get some spare time. 

I use capo to slow down and practice but it’s a subscription model and pretty expensive for what I use it for. 

Please do !

Blueingreen

Fortheloveofguitar said:

I downloaded this morning and so impressed I bought the full version as I needed to be able to export the altered mix

Sole reason I bought it was to isolate solos from songs. There’s a few over the years that the solos are so fast and embedded in the mix that Riffstation etc still couldn’t pull the notes out far enough for me to hear what was really going on 

This app has got me the best results yet so more than worth the £48 price tag for me personally 

Looking forward to having a lot of fun with this. Made my day 

That sounds like a solid recommendation to me.  I've downloaded Reaper (as a potential Ableton replacement) and Line 6 Native in the past week or so so I've got plenty on my hands but I hope to check this out in due course.

andy_k

Quite impressed with the results, not sure what options exist in the free version, but did get a nag screen after trying out 4 different songs, was hoping some exporting might be available in the freebie, but not too expensive really, the tracks isolate pretty well, but they are far from clean tracks, some of the guitar stuff i listened to had a weird vocal quality, it is very clever though.

andy_k

As a further note, I have got good use out of a similar ( free ) app from the Mac app store, called Riffstation, which can detect chords and tempo, change pitch and isolate to some extent, with export option.
Tinkered a bit more with Neural mix, and export is disabled for the free version, and I have had mixed results with various stuff, tested it out on something I recorded on my phone as an idea the other day, just guitar with heavily affected drums, and it couldn't quite get rid of a lot of the percussive element, it is promising, but I'm not ready to drop the cash yet, I expect there to be a lot of remixing done with it though, quite clever tech, and is a fair bit cheaper than the Izotope equivalent, with good results depending on the source.
(edit, I see Riffstation has already had a mention, also well recommended, can't go far wrong with free software )

allen

Well it's 5 months later and I've finally got round to doing a demo for guitar playing. 

Here it is:

allen

Blaendulais said:

allen said:

I might do a YouTube demo if I get some spare time. 

I use capo to slow down and practice but it’s a subscription model and pretty expensive for what I use it for. 

Please do !

FYI. I just did it.

Whistler

Impressed by the video (thanks @allen) I bought Neural Mix Pro three days ago and have been putting it through its paces to check how much it helps me to transcribe songs.

It analyses the key and tempo in about 3 seconds, far faster than I can. I checked over 300 songs our band plays, so these are my recordings.

In only 5 cases it guessed the wrong key. For example, it guessed a key of F#m for a song in D, A for a song in F and C for another song in F and two more I cannot remember. What is a pity is that I cannot tell the program what the correct key is.

As for the tempo, I am very impressed. We have songs in 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 12/8 time signatures, all handled perfectly, although sometimes it counted 12/8 songs as 12 beats and others as 4 beats, which I don't see as a problem, just not consistent. One song has a slow first verse before kicking into the song's proper tempo, and that was measured at the faster tempo. One song gradually speeds up, verse by verse. In that case it measured the tempo of the first verse. Two songs have recordings where we have not held a steady time (which I had noted beforehand) and these were measured as an average of the whole song. Overall, very impressive.

The tempo adjuster which speeds up or slows down the songs is a slider and it changes tempo very smoothly. In Preferences you choose how much the small slider can change the tempo. Up to 50% change it still sounds pretty fine but going for the maximum of 75% when slowing down you hear lots of artifacts, just like a low quality MP3. 50% felt like the ideal slow down speed for transcribing as it is half the tempo so it was natural to follow. One bonus is that we have a few songs where we disagree on the right tempo; with Neural Pro Mix it is easy to slide the tempo change slowly to hear and decide what feels right, at which point the new tempo is displayed so easy to make a note of. I could even export the adjusted file at the new tempo in case I want to play it to the band at rehearsal.

The 4 separated stems are more cleverly separated than just by EQing, as I tried to replicate it and came to realise there is more to it that just that. You can solo one stem or silence as many stems as you wish. Those unpleasant MP3-like artifacts were evident the fewer stems were left playing but I found that for transcribing I would prefer to turn the other 3 stems down by 80-90% rather than silence them completely so that I can faintly hear the song behind the soloed part. That reduced the artifacts greatly.

Leaving 3 stems at full volume and reducing one to around 10-20% of its original volume gives a music-1 type file, leaving you a clear enough sounding backing track. It is not a complaint but be aware that drums, bass and vocals are separated very well - not perfectly but good enough - but the harmonic stem combines guitar and keys so if you play guitar and want a backing track the keys will mostly be silenced along with the guitar.

The artifacts got me wondering, so, using a WAV copy of one of our songs, I exported each of the 4 stems and in my DAW put them together and I got the full original sound, so Neural Mix Pro does not compress or in any other way affect the sound.

I do a fair bit of transcribing and this will save me time and help me work faster, so £45 is not a lot for so much help on each and every song I will transcribe.

As the free version has a lot of the full version's capabilities it is well worth the time to play with it and see whether it does what you are looking for when transcribing. I have not used other software for transcribing so if you do or have you may be less impressed by Neural Mix Pro than I am - but I have written my review because I like it and will continue using it.

axisus

Whistler said:

Impressed by the video (thanks @allen) I bought Neural Mix Pro three days ago and have been putting it through its paces to check how much it helps me to transcribe songs .....

Thanks for that, an interesting write up. I'm now interested!

Blaendulais

allen said:

Blaendulais said:

allen said:

I might do a YouTube demo if I get some spare time. 

I use capo to slow down and practice but it’s a subscription model and pretty expensive for what I use it for. 

Please do !

FYI. I just did it.

Thanks